Fashion, Art and Lifestyle in Second Life

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Cherry Blossom

One of the great pleasures of Second Life to me is dressing my avatar which really allows me to bring out my love of fashion which has been something I have been interested in since childhood. One of the interesting off-shoots of this though is not only it resparked my creativity in taking photographs – which I used to do to a high standard in real life – but it has enabled me to find some interesting places for my avatar to model that I may have not found otherwise.

Sometimes this has been sparked by seeing anoher SL photographer’s work on an unfamiliar sim and wanting to visit it but in the case of today’s outfit the outfit – well the bikini to be exact – came first and everything else followed after.

I spotted the bikini at Collabor88 – a very popular fashion and homeware event which runs every month and includes great new products from many of Second Life’s top designers. I love these kind of fashion events because I often see something unexpected that inspires me to create something new. In this case I picked up quite a few different things including a lovely bikini with a red blossom pattern by Aphorism and a beautiful parasol set from one of my favourite furniture and home designers, What Next.

Red Blossom Bikini front

What Next Roses Parasol (rear)

Steampunk Heart Necklace

Elowen High Heels

I got home and excitedly unpacked my shopping and then realised that I had made a mistake. You see I had a system avi having not changed to mesh with the vast majority of SL fashionistas. The bikini and a lingerie set I had also purchased were both for mesh bodies only with no system layers so I reluctantly relegated them to the annals of my Inventory for when I finally upgraded my avie. However when I started thinking about it I was doing more and more sl photography and seeing a lot of other photographers photos and mesh seemed to winning hands down in the ability to create beautiful detailed SL portraits. I was finally convinced by seeing the beautiful Tatyana skin by Insol on a Logo Alex head on the blog of Strawberry Singh here and decided it might be time to give mesh a try. So yesterday after much research I finally took the plunge and changed to a mesh body (Lara by Maitreya) and that head and skin which I have in copper. The necklace is from Swallow at Cosmopolitan Event’s Hello Tuesday sale one day a week which is a great regular haunt of mine when on the look out for bargains! The shoes were a gacha prize but designed by Wicca’s Wardrobe. All the details are below.

The Red Blossom bikini was the first thing I tried and it looked gorgeous! The red blossom reminded me of cherry blossom and in conjunction with the parasol I wanted to take some photographs with a Japanese theme. I didn’t know many sims but a search led me to the wonderful Shinzen Japanese Garden at Yosemite, a quiet and peaceful place that really is relaxing virtual nature at it’s best. The sim includes a meditation area, a Buddha temple and a teahouse as well as a walking path and lots of free gifts.

Shoes: Elowen Heels by Wicca’s Wardrobe in Rose. This was a Gacha prize a while ago I think from the Gacha Garden but visit Wicca’s Wardrobe here: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/New/9/165/23 To find out more about it’s creator Wicca Merlin and her designs visit her website http://wiccamerlin.de/